Andre Drummond is one of the most promising young players in the NBA, but he’s also been wasting his talent on underachieving Detroit Pistons teams since he entered the league. But all that might change now. This certainly isn’t Bad Boys revisited or that mid-2000s squad that made six consecutive Conference Finals appearances, but several pieces are starting to fall into place for this current iteration in Detroit to climb their way out of the cellar.
The most significant of which might’ve been hiring Stan Van Gundy as coach and G.M. last season. He had Brandon Jennings in the midst of one of his best seasons as a pro prior to his season-ending injury, and no sooner than that happened had he acquired Reggie Jackson from the Thunder. He was also quick to cut his losses on the spectacular failure that was the short-lived Josh Smith experiment, and though he may have lost Greg Monroe to free agency, he landed one of the most NBA-ready talents in the entire 2015 Draft in Stanley Johnson.
All of this has the Pistons thinking about winning for a change, and that can’t come soon enough for Drummond, who is absolutely sick of watching the losses pile up season after season. Via Aaron McMann of MLive.com:
“I can’t stand it, it’s the worst feeling,” Drummond told reporters Monday during Pistons media day at The Palace of Auburn Hills. “People are laughing at our team — that’s not a good feeling. I want to rub it in somebody’s face that we’re a good team.”
Drummond is apparently so serious about it that he’s ascribed to the recent league-wide trend of offseason physical transform as a springboard to success. The good news is that the Pistons play in the Eastern Conference and that there’s still a couple of playoff spots remaining, even after you pencil in all the conference heavyweights from last season that are returning full force.
Still, it’s going to be an uphill battle for a team that certainly has the talent to be successful but quite simply doesn’t have the experience to do so. They’ll have to lean heavily on Van Gundy and new point guard Jackson in that department, the only two with any notable postseason experience to speak of. But they just might surprise the league this season, in which case Drummond will relish the opportunity to rub it in everyone’s faces.
